1. Burning Church, Glover, Vermont, Circa 1910
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‘About forty per cent of Americans describe themselves as 'born again', a designation that covers a great many separate creeds, even, these days, a certain strain of Roman Catholicism.‘
1. Burning Church, Glover, Vermont, Circa 1910
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‘I think there should be a National Service of Hospitality. The best way to see the true face of humanity is to serve it a plate of chips.’
Camilla Grudova on bad-mannered customers.
‘Anyone who has ever worked night shifts will understand the vertiginous feeling that comes with staring down the day from the wrong end.’
A.K. Blakemore on working nights.
‘I was constantly reading job ads, trying to find my holy grail – a job I could stand to do, and someone foolish enough to hire me.’
Sandra Newman on learning how to play professional blackjack.
‘I loved being a receptionist. What I loved about it was playing the part of being a receptionist.’
Emily Berry on being a temporary office worker.
‘Every part of you would swell, including your eyeballs, and no matter how much water you drank, you were always dehydrated.’
Junot Díaz on working for a steel mill.
Luc Sante was born in Verviers, Belgium and now lives in New York. 'Lingua Franca', published in Granta 59: France: The Outsider, was taken from The Factory of Facts, published by Granta in 1998.
More about the author →‘In order to write of my childhood I have to translate. It is as if I were writing about someone else. As a boy, I lived in French; now, I live in English.’
‘Time in its passing casts off particles of itself in the form of images, documents, relics, junk.‘
‘At night her friends let loose and relax.’
Photography by Vera Yijun Zhou of house parties and clubs in Hangzhou, Shanghai and Beijing.
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‘I tell my dead father if he gives any more advice that rhymes, I’ll leave this story unfinished.’
Fiction by Idra Novey.
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